2023-08-19 05:01:00
Guatemala will hold the second round of its electoral process this Sunday to decide who will be its next president: former first lady Sandra Torres Casanova or the academic from the Seed Movement, Bernardo Arévalo de León, who is the target of a legal crusade from the State to harm him .
The Seed Chase
Since the first round last June, the Guatemalan Public Ministry tried to stop Arévalo’s candidacy for an alleged case of false signatures. However, lawyers for his Semilla party were not allowed access to the files with the alleged evidence, while the accusations are increasingly contradictory and interpreted as attempts to prevent him from coming to power.
The situation led to the visit of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, to verify the electoral outlook. That entity condemned throughout these months the “political persecution” against Semilla, while the United States progressively raised its tone and went so far as to point out that what is happening in Guatemala is typical of “dictatorships.” In addition, the leadership of the Public Ministry is sanctioned by the White House for corruption. Despite this, prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche stated this week that he does not rule out raids, arrests or the lifting of privileges against members of Semilla, including the presidential candidate.
Torres’ complaint
The candidate of the National Unity of Hope (UNE), Sandra Torres Casanova, questioned this Friday the cleanliness of the ballot, stating that there are foreigners and supporters of Arévalo in the computer system of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). “We question this electoral process, we are very concerned about any alteration of data,” said the ex-wife of the late Social Democratic president, Álvaro Colom, at a press conference prior to the closing ceremony of his campaign.
“Is the TSE impartial, is it objective, or is it from Semilla? I cannot trust a system where there are digitizers affiliated with another party,” said the 67-year-old candidate. She also insisted that in this electoral process “there are no equal conditions, (since) here the conditions are biased” and demanded that the TSE “change those digitizers.”
The former first lady will compete for the third consecutive time in a second round for the presidency, after losing to Jimmy Morales in 2015 and Alejandro Giammattei in 2019. In June she won the first round with almost 900,000 votes, but polls suggest that she will stay cut again to reach the presidency: Arévalo would lead with 60 percent of the votes.
The current deputy Arévalo mainly won the acceptance of the urban population for his anti-corruption promises and his conciliatory character, in addition to being the son of former president Juan José Arévalo Bermejo, who between 1945 and 1951 promoted great changes for the local population. Regardless of the result, Sunday’s runoff will mark the end of 12 years of right-wing governments.
disinformation campaign
Arévalo de León is not only harassed by the Prosecutor’s Office during the campaign: he was also the target of false news. A video with his party logo and images of a military parade, where it is reported that the Guatemalan Army would be dissolved, went viral on the internet. Faced with the controversy, the party clarified that it never produced this material and its official government plan does not have that proposal.
The same thing happened with a video that exposes an alleged plan to create the Religious Congregations Tax Law. The party denied having any relationship with this material and in its statutes they emphasize freedom of worship. In his electoral program, it is detailed that the proposals were built from a plural consultation that included several “religious leaders and leaders.” In its roadmap, Semilla promises to prioritize “attention to the poorest” in public institutions “regardless of their last name, what language they speak, the color of their skin, what income they have or what religion they profess, how they dress, or if They are a man or a woman, from the country or from the city”.
Nor is it true that Bernardo Arévalo revealed in an interview a project to expropriate land to distribute it, despite the fact that social media accounts share a video in which the candidate is heard saying: “We are going to take land from the one who has to distribute it to those who do not have”. The sequence is rigged. In reality, the images correspond to an interview offered by the politician to a local station, in which he spoke in a totally opposite way. With the original material it can be verified that the misinformers dispensed with a part of the speech, in which Arévalo specified: “And we want to make it very clear: we are not talking about that we are going to take land from those who have it to distribute it to those who do not have it. “.
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